Double standards, anyone? Look Left.

The more we get contextual information about Cliven Bundy’s comments, the more it’s clear that he was making a valid argument, although doing so in the most painful, inarticulate way, and the way most likely to come back and bite his supporters in the butt. As best as I can tell, what Bundy was saying is that slavery is slavery, whether you’re enslaved to an individual or a nation.

He’s right, too. The difference between now and the antebellum era is that blacks have never been masters of their own destiny. For the vast majority, their status is remarkably indistinguishable from what it once was: marginal existences; dependency (in the past, they weren’t rewarded for their work; in the present, too many don’t work); and children without fathers.

Today, as an extra fillip to their drab dependency, they get the twin scourges of drugs and crime. Oh, and there’s one other big difference: today blacks are directly complicit in their own enslavement. In the past, starting in Africa, it was other blacks who were complicit in the enslavement process. Now they do it to themselves.

Incidentally, I’m beginning to think that, rather than looking at the RNC’s conduct as virtuous, it’s a huge problem the way conservatives reflexively distance themselves from these things without first investigating. Having thrown Bundy under the bus, the right cannot resurrect his principled arguments about the way in which government owns people, something antithetical to the principles set out in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Rather than going into stupid panic mode, it would be infinitely better if the right would first stop and think for a minute — and, in the first instance, say something such as, “If Bundy indeed said what he’s accused of saying, and there’s no contextual excuse, we condemn it. However, we’re not going to indict someone without investigation, etc.” As it is, they’re constantly stupidly reactive, instead of intelligently proactive.

That’s the mark of a well trained slave. Make the sound of a whip, it gets to work. See how it works?

JKB

Well, Bundy said that which cannot be said. He raised the question of whether the black people’s physical slavery pre-1860 was better or worse than the government dependency post 1964? Such thoughts are just not allowed. BTW, he used the word “Negro”. A word that is used on official US government census forms to categorize those of sub-Saharan African ancestry.

But the land dispute or the inarticulate statement are not the point here. People came from all over to oppose the federal government’s terrorist actions against this citizen. What terrorist actions? Well, they had a court order authorizing the removal of the cattle from “federal” land. But the government didn’t come to remove the cattle. They apparently sent no one with experience handling cattle. The killed many of the cows. They purposely killed two bulls ( breeding stock) saying they were a danger. Suddenly, in a pasture, they are a danger? To whom? Perhaps the incompetent government agents sent to remove the cattle? Would they have been a danger to someone with cattle handling experience?

The government also purposely damaged private property that was not threat to the removal of the cattle in question. They shot up water tanks. Now that requires willful discharging of firearms, which is neither a proper means of removing water tanks nor safe gun handling. They ripped up water lines, but I doubt they brought in a properly trained crew to remove them.

These acts, the killing of cattle, the purposeful killing of breeding stock, the wanton discharge of firearms to render water tanks unusable, the ripping up of water lines, were not proper lawful execution of a court order but rather terroristic actions designed to intimidate and influence for political aims.

Mike Devx

I think you’re letting Cliven Bundy off lightly.

First of all, white people – anybody! – can fall into dependency just as easily as black people. Dependency on government, dependency on alcohol, dependency on whatever. To single out blacks is to single ont one class of people, and yep, it’s racist when you do that – when you single out one group for criticism based solely on the color of their skin.

Yes, Democrats are racist. Yes, many blacks are racist. Moving on.

Cliven Bundy is also an ignorant fool. You can say that government dependency is like a form of slavery – GENERAL slavery. There have been quite a few different forms of slavery throughout history – 3000 years? – and not all of them have been as vicious and monstrous as Southern American slavery.

I do not believe it is possible to compare it to Southern American slavery. An iron collar around the neck, chains on the legs, an overseer controlling your every move and whipping you, the forced separation of families… The complete loss of all freedom, the translation of a human being into actual property…

I value individual freedom too much to say that government dependency is like Southern American slavery. I refuse to. I support Cliven Bundy’s stand against the government concerning the land grab, but when it comes to race and slavery, I count him an ignorant fool.

You still don’t accept the Democrat institution of slavery being the only cause of racial warfare in the US since Civil War 1 and soon to be Civil War 2, do you.

MacG

“when you single out one group for criticism based solely on the color of their skin.”

I did not draw criticism of black Americans from his comment. What was there was observation of those few he saw and criticism of the system which has continued to oppress them while being ‘free’.
I do not believe Bundy used simile as to equate but rather given the crowded conditions of the Government housing and the lack of work with nothing to do for the people he saw, he WONDERED if they really were free, what did it get them to be free if it meant hanging around government housing with nothing to do being bored out of their skulls marginalized in society.
Ignorant basing his comment off one observation, sure but from what I have seen he was not equating two systems but rather the condition of being free, trapped in a tenement.

JKB

Well, as bad as slavery in the United States was, and it wasn’t just Southern although that was the last vestiges, slavery in the US was far better than slavery in the Caribbean under the French and even the British. And the horrific work to death conditions of European sugar plantations were, they pale when compared to the conditions of slaves taken to the North African and other Muslim countries. Once captured into slavery by black Africans, a captured African faired much better going west to the New World than east to the Muslim world. Assuming they were of the few who survived the trip north, the males were castrated to prevent propagation. The babies born to black African women in the muslim countries were summarily killed at birth to stop propagation.

In any case, making the comparison between physical slavery and dependency slavery is more a simile to provoke a viewpoint. Not unlike the university adjuncts saying they are like slaves, or migrant workers or sharecroppers.

And yes, whites, et al, can fall into dependency. But that wasn’t the point. Blacks have been specifically targeted for welfare and it is readily apparent that their family and societal structure has been damaged by it even compared to actual slavery and Jim Crow.

People will need a long time to learn the true nature of slavery. Just as it took them a long time, and a great more suffering needed, to understand the true nature of the Left.

Mike Devx

I appreciate all the comments. But comparing a state of disgusting dependency to bondage slavery is utterly ignorant to me, and always will be. In any case, the paramilitary actions of the US govt are far more serious than any idiotic man’s off the cuff comments. Commenting on Bundy’s regrettable statements only furthers the media’s complicit game here in hiding the seriously dangerous actions of our out-of-control government. In a very small way I’ve contributed to their deliberate fog of confusion and deception concerning our dangerous government. Rock and a hard place.

So, Bundy is not a perfect saint. So what? He’s on the side of the angels in the fight that matters, against our out-of-control government. People are calling him “toxic”, and that’s a damned shame. He’s not toxic to me. Despite idiotic statements that in the end don’t matter, I’m behind him in the fight that matters 100%.

The idea that mental slavery is better or significantly different to physical slavery, is your error, Mike, neither the world’s nor anyone else’s.

Mike Devx

You are free to call it an error if you wish, Ymar. Lucky thing there – your being *free* to do so.

People trapped in dependency on government remain *free* to change their position in life if they choose to. How many of our own decisions – all of us! – are limited in the same manner by our inability to even SEE opportunities and actions that would benefit us? We all have blinders, just as those trapped on dependency have huge blinders.

People say that “being forced to work for a minimum wage” is a form of slavery. Who’s forcing them?

Last I checked, an American Negro slave in 1850 found it rather difficult to move from Alabama to Ohio to better his life.

People had the same idea about the Left. Look where that got them. People are still unable to connect the dots. As was true with the Leftist alliance, so shall it be true with slavery.

lee

A progressive Facebook friend’s progressive friend wrote three following:

Don’t get me wrong, the federal government does do horrible things; paramilitary raids on peoples’ houses leading to deaths for nonviolent drug use is at the top of my list, as are the ridiculously overzealous prosecutions of people under the Lacey Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Sometimes a person’s views really can taint the person, though; I suspect peoples’ shift are much more of an indictment of him than of his land situation with the BLM (which I’m not sure was even well-described by media in the first place).

Interesting read. I think there are some things that left and thought are agreeing on…

Slavery as a kind of payment to society, like a criminal sentence or a debt peonage system, is different from the philosophical slavery justified on moral, religious, or idealistic (eugenics) foundation.